


the false immortals

by stargirls



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Pre-Canon, but better safe than sorry!, of the android variety so it doesn't really count
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-28 00:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15696177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargirls/pseuds/stargirls
Summary: Ezra Castelo has just been given the opportunity of a lifetime. CyberLife needs a synthetic designer for their RK800 line, a sleek new prototype with abundant prospects, and they've decided that he's the one for the job.But it doesn't take long for Ezra to realize that this is no ordinary project. The stakes are much higher than CyberLife is willing to admit, and they're prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve perfection—there's just one thing they haven't counted on.





	the false immortals

**Author's Note:**

> arrested for dbh lore on main.
> 
> anyway, do yall ever think about the fact that there were, canonically, 50 connors before the boy we all know and love? and that the rk800's activation date was sometime in august, which means that if we assume its initial activation was august first, it took cyberlife two weeks to go through 50 connors? and that we have absolutely no idea why, or how?
> 
> because i do. i think about it a lot.
> 
> david cage is on twitter now, which means you should definitely go block him when you have the chance. enjoy!

“You have a nice little setup, here,” Jocelyn Kovac says. She has a pale, shimmering all-access strip across his visitor’s badge, and Ezra can’t help but resent her for it. His had taken three years to earn, and yet here he is, acting as her tour guide to the furthest corners of the CyberLife production center without her having lifted a finger.

Well. He supposes that being the head of prototypical oversight counts for more than lifting a finger, but still, she’d done scarcely more than waltz through the front door before their welcome committee had been all over her. Ezra still isn’t sure why they’d wanted him to show her around—he has slightly more important things to attend to, after all—but he’d be foolish to turn down an opportunity like this. Petty as he might be, Jocelyn is practically one of CyberLife’s inner circle. If she approves of his work here and now, it could spell out great things for his future.

He can swallow his pride for one day. For the sake of his career.

“Thanks,” he returns, and throws in a humble dip of his head. His dignity doesn’t have to know. “It’s a wonderful facility we’ve been provided with.”

They’re on the skywalk, which is one of Ezra’s least favorite parts of the production center. He doesn’t mind heights as much as people seem to think, but the long, monotonous assembly lines below can get dizzying very quick. Luckily, his job isn’t to ogle the magnitude of their operation. He’s tasked with watching Jocelyn’s every move, and so far, she seems to approve. Her gaze skims the machinery beneath their feet and moves to the imposing door in front of them.

As they approach, Ezra tugs his lanyard off and moves to place it on the scanner. He’s being a little spiteful, sure; Jocelyn’s badge could just as easily have worked, but he’s a qualified synthetic engineer and he’s earned the right to open doors. With a pneumatic hiss, it slides open, and they step into a coolly lit hallway and leave the skywalk behind. The muffled, industrial clatter of the assembly lines is replaced by a tamer hum.

Ezra likes the quiet. He has colleagues who never remove their earbuds, but for him, the silence is rare and unbroken land for ideas to sprout. Even when he goes to speak, he’s inclined to lower his voice, like one might in a library. “So this is our Department of Design and Aesthetic Development,” he says, as they stroll past rows of frosted-glass offices. “This is where all the humans are.”

Jocelyn actually looks a little amused. Score one for offhand quips, Ezra thinks. “I assume this is where prototypical designs are conceptualized?”

“Right. We have different teams to take on different commissions, and they work with our engineers to make the designs practical but familiar.” _More human than human,_ Ezra’s colleagues like to say. _Turn left-facing and you dunno what you’re looking at._ “With a full team of people, one new design typically takes about a month to complete. We only have about three new designs per year, mind you,” he adds, when Jocelyn’s brow starts to furrow. “The really hands-on projects are the orders placed specifically by CyberLife HQ. Those are usually assigned to one or two designers, and then it’s just their sole focus until the project is completed.”

She hums and follows a few shadows against the glass. Ezra links his hands behind his back and has just started to twiddle his thumbs when she says, “And why did they choose you for this one?”

A challenge. Or something like that. “I’m young, ma’am,” says Ezra, “but I’m qualified. If you’re asking me, I’d say it was my design for the AP700, but I’m not really sure what caused headquarters to take notice.”

He doesn’t like to brag that much about the AP700. It’s definitely his claim to fame if he even has one, but talking about it makes him sound stuck-up, and it’s always a surefire way to draw the ire of his coworkers. It’s because he’s young, he supposes. Thirty-two makes him one of the juniors of the office, and juniors, no matter how aesthetically inclined they are, aren’t supposed to have their designs put into production.

Ezra doesn’t much care about it now. He’s always figured he’d be hated around the office sooner or later—for spilling tea on the coffee girl, or something to that end—and now he can put it out of his mind.

Unfortunately for him, it’s made him a little vulnerable to the habit of not really caring what people think, and Jocelyn is no exception. Fortunately for his _employed_ status, she doesn’t react to his defense with any more than a tilt of her head. “Sometimes you’re just not sure,” she says, and continues on. He’s not sure how she can walk faster in heels than he can in loafers, but he really needs to look into the practical benefits of heels.

They come to one of the workspaces, which has his name and _WORK IN PROGRESS_ illuminated over the scanner. This time, Ezra is proud to take out his badge and swipe it neatly across the pad. It blinks a calm, welcoming green, and a door detaches from the glass and swings open. Jocelyn goes in before he does. He re-adjusts his lanyard and follows at her heels.

There’s his desk, strewn with papers and blueprints and a lamp covered in stickers; a computer terminal with a holographic interaction panel and some V-gloves; and farther back, where a small cluster of machinery is stalled—the android.

It has its skin activated, clad in a modest CyberLife-issue shirt and trousers. Androids aren’t shy about nudity, and neither is Ezra, but he’d had the feeling that Jocelyn wouldn’t be eager to see every inch of the prototype just yet. She pauses in front of it as Ezra circles the machinery and goes to the back of the workspace. He types a few commands into the control center, and the long, metallic arm holding the android in place sets it on the floor and detaches from its back. He can’t see it from here, but he knows its eyes are fluttering.

“Wakey-wakey, 01,” he says.

01’s LED flickers. It looks to Ezra as he comes back into view, then to Jocelyn, who has a thoughtful finger at her chin.

“Hello,” it says. Its voice synthesizer had been a special request on Ezra’s part, and he likes it—clear and lilting and a little hoarse. “I’m RK800 model 01, assigned serial number 313 248 317. It’s nice to meet you.”

Jocelyn circles it once, twice, and it trails her movements with a pair of soft brown eyes. It’s pale, with a flush of pink skin pressing through, and by contrast its hair is dark and striking. Ezra’s favorite feature tips constantly between the eyebrows, which are uneven and deceptively expressive; and the jawline, which one of his coworkers had called _sharp enough to kill a man_. But it doesn’t look unkind; its face is focused but open, with a loose tilt to its mouth. He’s found that personality is only part programming when it comes to androids. Everyone underestimates the power of looks.

“It’s interesting,” says Jocelyn. She cards a hand through its hair, which has a wayward strand hanging over its forehead that Ezra is quite proud of, then caresses its cheek. “The moles?”

“Individually constructed and placed,” Ezra says. He’s even prouder of that one. The moles are completely unique, scattered across 01’s face and body in tiny constellations. They’d taken hours to put together in his design program, but as things are turning out, it had been worth the effort.

She nods and thumbs over its lower lip, prompting it to open its mouth. “Does it have all its capabilities in place?”

“They still need to be test-run, but yes. The, uh… internal forensics lab is completely functional.” He’s not quite sure how else to refer to the analytic processors coating 01’s tongue. It had spawned all sorts of unsavory jokes in the breakroom, and now, Ezra gets uncomfortably hot whenever he thinks about it. “And we haven’t tested its durability yet, but we feel confident its threshold for damage is much higher than your average PL600.”

“Interesting,” Jocelyn says, again. Ezra doesn’t know what _interesting_ means, but he’s starting to worry about its connotations. She removes her hand and says, “Is there a reason you chose to make it so… disarming?”

So maybe Ezra doesn’t mind bragging as much as he thinks he does. “It’s meant for investigating and interrogating other androids,” he says. “Right? And androids, just like humans, are more likely to open up to people or things that are familiar to them. So RK800’s design takes inspiration from domestic _and_ public service-variety androids. It looks trustworthy, but you wouldn’t mistake it for a pushover. And its looks should help it make fast friends with the humans.”

He neglects to mention the thirty hours of film noirs and crime shows he now has under his belt in his pursuit of what makes the _ideal partner_. It’s hardly being paid to sit around when he’d been neck-deep in concept art at the time, anyway.

01 continues to watch Jocelyn as she paces. At six feet, it stands just taller than her, and she looks a little perturbed that there’s something in the room that can actually see over her head. “I like it,” she says, and Ezra has to swallow his extremely childish grin. “Is it ready for testing?”

“As ready as it’ll ever be, ma’am.”

She nods again and steps back, pursing her lips. “I want you to order a set of five and send them in for a first round of durability testing. I’m sure you know that CyberLife wants as little involvement in this project as possible, so you’ll need to oversee the evaluations yourself. I trust that’s alright with you,” she adds, in the way that makes it clear that she really isn’t looking for Ezra’s consent. “This is a prototype, so make sure they’re rigorous. If they show any sign of abnormal behavior or rebellion, I want you to deactivate them immediately.”

Ezra glances at 01, which meets his gaze impassively. “What about this one?”

“Deactivate it,” says Jocelyn. “The predecessors are nothing to get sentimental about.”

* * *

02 through 06 arrive the next day. It’s hard enough for CyberLife to dodge Ezra’s orders when he works in the production center, but on this project, as he’s starting to realize, they’re not eager to waste any time.

What he knows about said project is limited. He knows RK800 is a police android, meant to investigate and interrogate, and that CyberLife is serious about making it the most perfect of any model they’ve produced. Ezra’s colleagues have jokingly referred to it as the _golden boy_ , and he thinks they’re not all that far off. Logic tells him it’s natural for corporate to go all helicopter-parent on the project; their typical beat cop androids can’t compare to selling the DPD on a line of detectives. Usually, humans like when other humans solve cases. If they’re going to convince the public that an android is just as capable, said android has to be flawless.

There is something that nags at the back of Ezra’s mind and tells him that something else is going on; that the fact that CyberLife had sent their _head_ of prototypical oversight isn’t something to be brushed aside. He’d like to keep his job, so he decides not to think about it. What the higher-ups scheme about in their free time is none of his business.

Besides, he has more pressing matters at hand. Durability testing is an all-consuming affair, and with Ezra being the only hand on deck, he can’t afford to spend time obsessing over what’s going on behind closed doors. He takes his RK800s to meet CyberLife’s evaluator as soon as they arrive. She’s a small, sharply dressed woman who introduces herself as Reagan, and she smiles at the RK800s as they file into the room. Ezra likes her immediately.

“So,” she says. “We’re going to do a couple of different tests today, and I might ask you to help out with a few of them. Are you okay with that?”

“Sure.”

“Perfect.” There’s a large, dark briefcase sitting off to the side, and Reagan goes to it, releasing the biometric lock with her thumb. Ezra catches a glimpse of a few nasty-looking instruments, but she withdraws what looks like a baton and comes back over to where the RK800s stand. “Do they have designations?”

Ezra gestures down the line. “02, 03, 04, 05, 06.”

“02,” says Reagan, “come forward. Stand in front of me.”

It does. They’re all dressed in the same white CyberLife uniform, with nothing to tell them apart save for the titular number printed across their breast. Ezra will make up minute differences between them, from time to time. He tells 03 that its eyes are darker. 05 has softer hair. 02 actually does have a quirk that he’s at a loss to explain—it likes to smile with its teeth, despite Ezra’s protocols that dictate a closed-mouth smile. He wonders if CyberLife would classify that as _abnormal behavior_.

At any rate, 02 looks nothing but normal at the moment. It tips its head and watches Reagan as she circles it once, then returns to face it.

“Attack me, 02,” she says.

Of course 02 complies. It lunges at Reagan, who snaps the baton to its full length and hits it across the shoulder. Its arm stiffens, but doesn’t fall limp, and it tries to snatch the baton out of her hand. Reagan dodges under its outstretched hand and strikes the back of 02’s knee, and it stumbles, although it does take a second to go down. When it does, Reagan whirls around and whips the baton against its neck. 02’s eyes go wide, and its LED turns a violent red.

“Uh—” Ezra isn’t entirely sure what durability testing entails, but he’s pretty sure this isn’t part of it. “I think you neutralized it, you might want to be—”

With another sickening _crack_ , the baton sends a jolt of electricity straight through 02’s positronic brainstem. It freezes up and goes slack.

“—careful,” he finishes, weakly.

Reagan checks her watch. “Twenty-six seconds. RK800 03 through 06, confirm observational learning protocols.”

“Confirmed,” chorus the four remaining androids. Their LEDs are flickering a bright, uneasy yellow, and Ezra can’t help but compare the scene to four people bearing witness to a murder.

“I think I might’ve, uh…” He lets out an unsteady breath. “I think I might’ve missed a memo, here?”

“Probably,” says Reagan, but she looks almost apologetic. She retracts the baton and says, “CyberLife isn’t worried about the disposal rate for this one. We’re looking for maximum efficiency and endurance at all costs, and that includes going through as many models as we need. And blunt force trauma is one of the earliest indicators of durability. I’m sorry if that was unexpected.”

“No, it wasn’t…” They’re machines, Ezra thinks. Watching 02 get beaten into shutdown is no more disturbing than watching someone smash in a television with a bat. “They’re just expensive, that’s all. And I know how corporate is about finances.”

She grins. “Don’t I know it. But like I said, we’ll do whatever it takes. I’m assuming they all complete memory transfers before shutdown, right?”

“The explicit stuff, yeah. Implicit memory is consistently interfaced between whichever RK800 models are active.”

“Implicit meaning…”

“The basics,” says Ezra. “Directives, established relationships, rules and boundaries not already programmed in by CyberLife. Those are riskier things to leave up to a memory transfer, because sometimes the transfers don’t have time to go through. The active models have a Cloud, basically. All the implicit data is stored in the Cloud.”

That’s about the extent of his programming knowledge, but luckily, Reagan doesn’t ask any more questions. “Good,” is all she says, and then, “We’re gonna keep going, okay? 03, step forward. Attack me.”

03 holds out twenty-five seconds longer than 02. 04 holds out forty-one seconds longer than 03. By the time Reagan gets through 05, its time against her is two minutes and six seconds, even though she has the advantage of electricity on her side. It collapses with burns seared across its face and arms that blacken the plastic beneath. Ezra can’t help but flinch.

Luckily, she doesn’t seem to notice. She kneels next to 05 and moves her fingers across the burns, sampling the texture of each. “It definitely needs some work. Obviously it’s learning, and its defense protocols aren’t in place, but the synthetic skin gives way under some pretty basic pressures. You can make that happen, right?”

She’s definitely friendlier about it, but just like Jocelyn Kovac, Ezra knows that Reagan’s request is more like an order. “ ’Course,” he says. “If you let me take 06 here, I can have that done by tomorrow.”

Reagan seems satisfied with that. “I’ll order four more of these,” she says. “We’ll do some one-on-one combat tomorrow. Make this one’s skin a little thicker, okay?”

Ezra smiles halfheartedly at her quip. He takes 06 back to his workspace, and of course it doesn’t say a word, but its LED flickers yellow the whole way.

* * *

At the session that follows, it takes CyberLife’s evaluator three minutes and thirty-seven seconds to disable 06 and bring it to its knees. Its burns are shallow, and as it kneels in front of Reagan, Ezra can see its self-repairing mechanism starting to set to work.

She watches it go for a minute or so, then nods approvingly and sends a brisk shock through 06’s head. It stiffens and slumps in a matter of seconds. Ezra has to remind himself that from here on out, his edits are automatically incorporated into the new models, and that 06 was nothing special. He knows he’s not the first creator to get a little protective over his design.

07 through 10 stand behind him, and Reagan has him step aside. She doesn’t have her briefcase with her today; only a tablet with CyberLife’s official logo illuminated on the back. “Okay,” she says. “07, engage 09 in combat. 08, the same with 10. Try to neutralize each other. Defend yourselves if necessary.”

Instantly the androids spring apart and start to scuffle with each other. It’s strange, Ezra thinks. Like watching someone grapple with a mirror. They let out little grunts and whimpers when a blow lands—one of CyberLife’s more human mechanisms, meant to alert someone when serious damage is being inflicted. He has to remind himself that there’s no way it can hurt. An android doesn’t know pain any more than he knows what’s going on inside Reagan’s head.

She observes, poker-faced, as 09 snaps 07’s neck. 08’s victory is a little more difficult, but eventually it manages to slam 10’s head into the floor and shut it down. Ezra feels his stomach flip. Blue blood slicks 08’s hands as it comes to stand in front of Reagan, and it searches her face, looking for some kind of recognition or affirmation. _Congratulations on the murder._ He almost rolls his eyes.

The synthetic damage is starting to look more and more real. When Reagan turns 10 on its back, thirium drips out of its mouth and soaks the front of its shirt. There’s a reason they call it _blue blood_ , Ezra supposes. She pokes around the head wound to search for traces of plastic, but there isn’t any. It looks about as authentic as a fatal wound can be.

“Nice,” she says, wiping the thirium on a clean corner of 10’s shirt. “It looks good. Did you increase the concentration of thirium, or is that just me?”

Ezra shrugs. “When it gets shot, it should bleed and clot like a person does. I talked to someone in anatomical composition, and they recommended an increase of about three percent.”

Reagan doesn’t immediately reply. When she turns, she has a strange light in her eye, sharp and almost predatory as she stares him down. Ezra has to fight the urge to shrink back. He’s significantly taller than her, but in the moment, his height isn’t awarding him any advantages.

“How much are you telling your coworkers?” she says.

He focuses on her eyelashes. Avoiding eye contact isn’t like him, but she’s looking at him like he’s one of the RK800s and he’s just disobeyed a direct order.  “As much as they’re allowed to know. They don’t know any specifics, and if I have to ask them questions about that stuff—thirium distribution, or whatever—it’s always in hypotheticals. I wouldn’t give away anything I’m not supposed to,” he adds, like his word is going to make a difference. “I swear.”

She relaxes a hair, although that dangerous glint doesn’t quite leave her gaze. Not for the first time, Ezra remembers that this five-foot-nothing corporate send could dislocate his shoulder and hang him off the skywalk if she so much as suspects he’s made a misstep. “Sorry,” she says, even though she’s missing most of the sincerity that he’s come to know from her. “We just have to be careful with these things. You understand. If something was to get out about this project before CyberLife approved it…”

“Right,” says Ezra, hurriedly. “Right, I know.”

Reagan doesn’t look like she believes him, and honestly, he’s not so sure he believes himself, either. “They entrusted you with this project,” she says, and drums her fingernails idly against the tablet. “It’s a pretty big deal. I’m sure you get that. Being in CyberLife’s good graces isn’t an easy life, but if you stay there, you’re definitely going to have good things coming your way.”

“Right,” Ezra echoes.

She nods and taps out a few things on the tablet. “We’ll do a bit more blunt force testing when we have some new models, but right now, I’m pretty interested in seeing what these two can do to each other. 08, 09,” she says, and they snap to attention. “I want you to cause as much damage to your opponent as you can. Use only your bodies.”

Ezra almost opens his mouth to object, although he has absolutely no idea what he’s objecting to. He stands aside as 09 charges at 08 and pushes it to the ground, slamming the back of its head against the floor. It rips at 08’s clothes as 08 struggles and thrashes, biting at 09’s forearm and coming away with shards of plastic between its teeth. 09 backhands 08 and cracks open its jaw, and its mouth starts to fill with thirium. Flecks of it fly into the air and land on Ezra’s shoes.

He can’t help but watch as 08 tears 09’s arm from its shoulder. He can’t bring himself to look away when 09 grabs the arm and uses it to cave in 08’s ribcage. He isn’t even sure which one of them shuts down first—they collapse into each other, twitching and seizing and bleeding out onto the floor. Their bodies, and Ezra’s meticulously mapped synthetic skin, are so far beyond unrecognizable that he can’t even bring himself to be sickened.

“Holy shit,” he says.

“You got that right,” Reagan murmurs. She types something else into her tablet and says, “This one’s a killer, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” says Ezra. Except now, he does.

* * *

Most of the new models stay in his workspace, all boxed up and labeled for his convenience. Today, Reagan wants three. 11, 12, and 13 all follow him to the simulation room. “Honestly,” Ezra confesses, as they take the elevator down, “I feel kinda guilty. This is like taking you all to the chopping block, and you don’t even know it.”

They don’t say anything. They’re models issued specifically for beta testing, with rudimentary processors and none of the RK800’s actual personality. Ezra has decided to think of them as empty shells, even though he knows that’s not what they are. It makes it easier for him to watch them hit the ground after Reagan’s through with them.

She’s waiting for him when he arrives, and there’s a large glass chamber set up in the middle of the room, along with a control panel that reminds him of the one in his workspace. “Weather testing,” she says, by way of explanation. “We’re going to do snow, rain, and hail today. Tomorrow we’ll get into heat and pressure, I think. How are the upgrades going?”

It comes across so offhandedly that Ezra can’t help but frown. _The upgrades_ is a pretty flip way to refer to the project that’s been consuming his every waking moment—when he’s not watching his models come apart piece by piece, that is. “They’re fine,” he says, “but I think they would be more effective if we weren’t restricted to such short sessions. I don’t really have the time to collect enough data, y’know?”

Judging by the look Reagan gives him, she really doesn’t. “We don’t want to keep you from the stuff that really matters,” is all she says. “HQ knows designing is slow work, and you wouldn’t rush an artist on their craft, right?”

Ezra has to admit that being called an _artist_ is pretty gratifying, even under the circumstances. He stands at the control panel while Reagan ushers 11 into the box. There’s a tiny screen for readouts, a couple levers and dials, and three buttons with tiny illustrations on them—rain, snow, and hail, he thinks. They’re actually a little cartoonish for CyberLife’s streamlined style. He rubs at the rim of the panel and rocks back on his heels, and after showing 11 where to stand, Reagan returns.

She fiddles with a couple of the dials as 11 takes in its surroundings. It blinks almost innocently, tipping its head to look through the glass and up at the ceiling. Its LED spins a calm, thoughtful blue, and Ezra feels something like guilt twist in his stomach. It doesn’t have any idea what it’s being used for, he thinks. Not that that matters. It’s a machine, it’s built to be used. He’s projecting his empathy onto something that doesn’t need it.

Those tiny, idle movements, like the way 11 shifts its weight from one foot to the other and rubs a thumb over its wrist—androids can be pretty convincing when they want to be. But they’re programmed, nothing more.

Reagan is saying something. “This equipment is actually pretty cool,” she says. “It was originally used to test combat gear in extreme weather conditions, and there’s a version of it that’s actually being patented to help increase the accuracy of weather forecasts. They’ve even used it to treat decompression sickness, because you can control the temperature _and_ the atmosphere. Weird, right?”

“Super weird,” says Ezra. He still can’t tell what it is about Reagan that lets her flip the switch between threatening CyberLife authority and chill, friendly evaluator. At least androids are predictable most of the time. Humans like to give predictability the boot just for the hell of it.

He watches as she presses the button for _rain_ , and sure enough, tiny clouds start to form over 11’s head. It is, Ezra has to admit, kind of cool. Raindrops start to fall; first light enough to be brushed off, then steadier and harsher as they increase to a downpour. 11 pulls its arms to its chest and bows its head, trying to shelter itself from the self-contained storm.

Androids aren’t waterproof, of course, but they’re about as close as machines can get. Short of one going for a dip with an open mouth, there’s no reason why water should do any serious damage. But naturally, CyberLife is taking all necessary precautions. Ezra can practically hear Reagan’s answer before he thinks to ask.

So he stands and watches and she twists a few more dials, increasing the rain’s intensity. 11 shelters its face with one hand and reaches out for the wall, giving it an experimental push, but of course the glass doesn’t budge. It steps forward, fumbling, and makes for the corner nearest them. As the rain thickens to a torrent, it sits down and tucks its knees against its chest. Like some sort of fetal position.

Ezra glances at Reagan. “I think it’s had enough.”

She shakes her head and twists another dial, and glass goes foggy as curtains of rain push down on the android in the corner. After a few more seconds, the panel’s screen flashes a warning: _UNRECORDED ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURES DETECTED._ Only then does Reagan start to let the storm recede.

When the clouds clear completely, they’re left with the last of the rain draining into the absorbent floor and 11 still curled up in the corner, soaked to the plastic bone. For reasons he can’t quite explain, Ezra is the first to the door. He takes 11’s hand and helps it up, and it doesn’t say anything, but its LED is a brilliant red.

Reagan stalks around it and takes notes with her eyes. She tips 11’s head, and water starts to drizzle from its ear. It twitches and shudders under her grip.

“Interesting,” she says. “I mean, obviously, that was a pretty extreme scenario, but it held up fairly well. No system flooding. Seems like it’s having a little bit of trouble with its core temperature, but that’s to be expected.”

She gives it one last critical once-over, then walks over to where her briefcase sits. Ezra puts a hand on 11’s arm. He’s not really sure why—humans do stupid things, and he might be smart, but he’s never been terribly practical. Nevertheless, as soon as he makes contact, 11 leans into his touch. It shuffles closer until its arm is bleeding rainwater into Ezra’s shirt.

When Reagan turns back around, she looks a little lost for words. “That’s new,” is all she says. “It must be trying to sap some of your body heat to get its own back to normal. Maybe the rain threw off its internal regulator?”

“I dunno,” Ezra manages. 11’s skin is cool to the touch, and he’s actually starting to shiver, but he doesn’t want to pull away. It feels wrong. Like he’s abandoning something—some _one_ —that needs him.

Then, of course, Reagan says, “You might want to step back,” and he remembers he doesn’t have a choice. So he does. And he doesn’t say a word when she removes the pistol from her waistband and shoots 11 in the head, leaving it to collapse backwards onto the concrete. Its eyes are open and draining rainwater.

Businesslike as always, Reagan goes promptly to its side and opens its chest compartment. She rummages around for what Ezra knows is the internal regulator; a small, bulbous synthetic component that sits nestled beneath an android’s thirium pump. When she finds it, she takes it out, holds it up to the light, and tugs what looks like an evidence bag out of her pocket. “I’ll have headquarters do a bit of advanced analysis on this,” she says. “See what went wrong. Hopefully we’ll have the data back to you in no time. Let’s get back to it, shall we?”

“Sure,” says Ezra, to 11’s exposed torso. He tears his gaze away and reminds himself what he already knows—these androids are even less than sentient machines. They’re empty shells that know how to react to stimuli, even if they don’t feel any of it. An android shivering doesn’t mean anything more than his computer giving him an apologetic pop-up when it crashes.

He keeps that in mind as he watches 12’s joints stiffen up and its eyes cloud over until it’s completely frozen through. He keeps that in mind as 13’s body caves in on itself under an onslaught of hail.

 _They’re just machines,_ he thinks. _Get over yourself._

* * *

Out of all of CyberLife’s creations, Ezra is pretty sure the RK800 has the highest mortality rate. He watches 14 and 15 fry in the android equivalent of electric chairs; Reagan attacks 16 with a bat and beats it until its knees give way. 17, 18, 19, and 20 are recruited for another impromptu fight club and tear each other apart until the simulation room is a field of scattered limbs and thirium. On an altogether incredibly odd day, Reagan takes Ezra and three of the RK800s to a different simulation room, which has a safe room for humans lined with bulletproof glass. She blows them up one by one, with land mines and sky bombs and a rocket launcher that unfolds from the wall. The last one actually remains standing in the aftermath, burned through a layer of plastic and skin with melted wires where its eyes should be. Reagan is absolutely delighted. She double-checks its memory upload before she shoots it in the head.

The day before had also taken place in a different room. Like some sort of Bond villain, Reagan placed two new models in a floor composed entirely of moving blocks at different heights and ordered them to get to the other side of the room. They’d leapt and swung and dodged until one was eventually crushed. The android that remained ended up on the wrong end of Reagan’s pistol, of course, but only after she’d sent off a glowing report to CyberLife and congratulated Ezra on their incredible resilience.

Today, Reagan isn’t here. Ezra is sitting in his office and toying half-heartedly with a Rubix Cube when the call comes in, and in his haste to answer it, he tosses the cube over his shoulder and makes what he’s sure is a noticeable dent in the wall. Oh, well. CyberLife’s fortune is more than adequate to do a little bit of renovation work.

His desktop illuminates with the familiar face of Jocelyn Kovac, who sits in the foreground of a breathtaking landscape. The city of Detroit rises behind her, reaching into the clouds, and Ezra almost forgets to say hello. He hasn’t seen the skyline in what feels like a pathetically long time.

“Hi, ma’am,” he says, eventually. “What can I do for you?”

She looks over his shoulder and to right about where the dent in the wall would be. The higher-ups really don’t miss a thing, Ezra thinks. “We’re bringing in a different evaluator today. Your RK800 performed well within expectations, and CyberLife wants to move forward with the testing now. I trust you can take care of any aesthetic issues as they arise.”

Jocelyn says _aesthetic issues_ a little disdainfully, and Ezra has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He’s gotten more than enough shit from the programmers about how all he really does is _make the plastic pretty_ , and at this point developing a comeback is practically reflexive. So he bites back a jibe about bureaucracy being known for its immediate solutions. It’s been a long and confusing week, and if he lets his façade of professionalism drop now, it’s going to get a whole lot longer.

Instead, he says, “What are we moving forward to?”

“Psychological evaluations,” says Jocelyn. “The RK800’s code was written by one of corporate’s programmers, and she’s coming in with an artificial psychologist to conduct some experiments. They can’t bring in a beta tester off the streets, so they’re requesting you help them with conducting some basic interactions. Do you think you can do that?”

“So I’d be talking to it,” Ezra says. “The android.”

She purses her lips. “That’s putting it simply, but yes. There’ll be certain criteria you need to look for, and certain questions you’ll need to ask. Our AP will direct you as far as those go. Otherwise, they’re just looking for a natural flow in actions and responses. Your job is to judge the authenticity of your interaction.”

“What about _abnormal behaviors_?”

Jocelyn’s gaze sharpens almost imperceptibly. “The AP will step in if anything doesn’t go as planned. You don’t need to worry about that. They’ll be arriving in the next hour with the new models, and you’ll meet them in room 2C for the first round of interviews.”

“CyberLife sure works fast, doesn’t it?” Ezra quips.

It doesn’t score him any points this time. She just nods blankly and terminates the connection, and he’s left sitting with his back to a Rubix Cube-shaped dent in the wall, staring at a pale laptop screen and wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into.

He doesn’t waste much time. He takes the elevator down to the second floor and remains pensively silent the whole way, even when a couple of his coworkers join him on the way down and start complaining about the color settings on the new breakroom flatscreens. The sudden disappearance of Jocelyn’s good humor is one thing—it isn’t his superior’s responsibility to indulge him in the comments that slip through his filter. CyberLife suddenly, inexplicably moving forward with the beta testing is another thing altogether. Reagan had made such a point of making her evaluations rigorous, Ezra thinks. They wouldn’t cut her off unless something had happened.

Or he’s being paranoid. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Room 2C is an interview room not unlike the one he’d been hired in. It sports a table, two chairs, and a single wall of windows that looks out on the skyline, which he can pinch between his fingers if he squints. The light strains of classical music float overhead; it’s meant to inspire “introspection and attentiveness” in potential hires, or so he’s heard. CyberLife is drowning in a sea of overblown rumor on any given day—there’s a particularly popular story floating around about technicians pumping chemically enhanced air into the workspaces to stimulate higher-level thinking. At this point, Ezra wouldn’t be surprised.

Those little anecdotes and exaggerations flutter around the office like gossip. It’s easy to make fun of corporate eccentricity, especially when corporate doesn’t mind playing into the _mysterious public establishment_ stereotype. Ezra and his coworkers will semi-seriously theorize about androids’ surveillance capabilities, and joke about their customers’ complacency, and make fun of the CyberLife representatives when they come by. But they all know, deep down, that their snark isn’t anywhere close to the truth. If it were, Ezra thinks, with a sudden chill, they’d all be left unemployed.

The view in front of him goes dark. He jumps and whirls around, and two people stand in the doorway, pinning him to the window with twin stares.

“Ezra Castelo?” one of them says. The psychologist, Ezra guesses. He’s dark and lanky and practically casts a shadow over the programmer, who almost makes it to his shoulder. Unlike her, his expression softens when he notices the alarm on Ezra’s face. After Reagan, Ezra is hesitant to judge a book by its cover, but he thinks he likes this man more than he likes the average CyberLife send.

“That’s me,” he says.

The maybe-psychologist steps forward and extends a hand. “Zachary Pierce,” he says. His palm is cool against Ezra’s. “Artificial psychologist. And this is Parker, our resident programmer. She’ll be helping us with the evaluation, but I’m sure you already knew that.”

 _Called it,_ Ezra thinks. Parker hasn’t ventured past the threshold, and as he watches, she leans back into the hallway and gestures to something out of sight. “You can come in now,” she says.

And there’s an RK800.

It looks exactly like the 01, of course, save for the luminous _26_ emblazoned on its shirt. Its eyes are still a depthless brown, its sloping hairline still broken by a single strand. Ezra can map the moles that speckle its face and neck from memory. Whatever changes it’s undergone, they’re not physical—but there _is_ something different about it. The way it looks from Parker to Ezra with light behind its eyes confirms as much.

“Hi,” it says, and its voice is as soft and mild as Ezra remembers, but there’s an inflection to it that imitates human speech in a very familiar way. “My name is Connor. I’m the RK800 model 26.”

“Connor?” is all Ezra can say.

“Its commercial name,” says Dr. Pierce. “Obviously, for this to work, it needs its social interaction module working and its personality in place. This is Parker’s work,” he adds, and shoots an amicable smile in the programmer’s direction. She returns it with a nod and something that’s probably supposed to be a smile, but looks about as sincere as the RK800’s irony protocols. “She’ll be here taking notes, mostly, so don’t mind her.”

“Cool,” says Ezra. He hasn’t quite managed to look away from 26— _Connor_ , he amends. It meets his gaping with a polite, placid gaze, and he knows that gaze, because he’d mapped the actuator movements in its face.

Dr. Pierce clears his throat. “Do you want to take a seat?”

“Oh, uh—yeah.” He does, and he doesn’t actually see Parker roll her eyes, but the sentiment is there nonetheless. The part of Ezra’s brain that isn’t preoccupied with how bizarre this all feels wonders if promotions can be withheld because the employee in question is just kind of dimwitted. “So how are we going to do this, again?”

“We just want you to talk to it,” says Dr. Pierce. Parker makes a motion with her head, and Connor sits down across from Ezra, straight-backed and clear-eyed. At least it looks like it knows what’s going on—he can’t even pretend that he does. “We’ll get into specifics as the testing goes on, but for right now, we’re just looking for some initial reactions. Anything that tells us more about its basic social ability. Make small talk with it, if you’d like.”

Three pairs of eyes settle expectantly on him. Ezra swallows. “So,” he says, to the android in front of him. “Um… I’m Ezra, Connor. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.” Connor’s smile is close-lipped and a little bit beautiful. “But this isn’t really our first time meeting, is it? You designed me and my predecessors.”

“Uh… yeah. What do you remember?”

“From them?” It tips its head, contemplative, and the gesture is so eerily human that Ezra has to remind himself what he’s looking at. “There were twenty-five models that came before me. They were all neutralized during different phases of durability testing.”

Behind him, Dr. Pierce rotates his fingers and mouths, _elaborate_. “Neutralized how?” Ezra says, and stumbles a little, but none of them seem to notice.

Connor’s eyes flick to a spot over Ezra’s shoulder. Its LED blinks and starts to spin a little erratically. “The first model was deactivated,” it says. “The second shut down after critical damage to the CPU stem. The third through fifth became… aggressive?”

It frowns.

“That’s not right. The memory upload suggests my predecessors were deactivated after destabilizing and attacking the evaluator, but there’s no evidence of instability.” The light at its temple shifts into yellow as it says, “This needs to be logged. I think my explicit transfer was tampered wi—”

A bullet buries itself in 26’s skull. It freezes up and slumps over the edge of the table, and Ezra swears, scrambling to his feet. “What the _fuck_!” he says, and it comes out as more of a whisper, because it feels as if all the air has suddenly and violently gone out of the room. “Oh, Christ. What the hell!”

Dr. Pierce tucks the pistol back into his waistband, under the hem of his unassuming jacket, and sighs. “Did you get all that?” he says to Parker, who hadn’t so much as flinched. She gives him a nod and taps something out on the screen of her tablet.

Ezra is still catching his breath. Connor— _26, that’s all it is_ —sits facedown, arms dangling uselessly, bleeding thirium off the edge of the table. He straightens up and tears his gaze away from the body across from him, and says, “The next time you want to shoot somebody in front of me, just give me a fucking _heads up_ , okay?”

It’s actually sad, how clearly he can hear his chances at a promotion tip and shatter on the ground. But neither of them seem angry. Dr. Pierce’s brow furrows with concern as he says, “Some _thing_ , Mr. Castelo.”

“What?”

“We didn’t shoot someone, we shot some _thing_ ,” he repeats. “It’s expendable. We have more of them with us. Are you feeling okay?”

This man has no right to sound as honestly worried as he does. “I’m fine,” Ezra snaps, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m fine, really. It was just a slip of the tongue.”

Dr. Pierce seems to take that for an acceptable answer, even though he shouldn’t, and they both know that. “Send in our first cleanup,” he says, into his phone. “And bring in the next model, please.”

Our _first_ cleanup, he’d said. Ezra has to swallow the acid that rises sharply and suddenly in his throat.

He watches silently as two WR600s come through the door, trailed by a cleaning droid that flutters around their heels. It scrubs thirium from the tile as the two androids retrieve 26’s body and take it from the room. 26’s eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling. It doesn’t weigh much more than the average six-foot male, but the WR600s carry it as if it weighs nothing at all.

Parker and Dr. Pierce are still eyeing him. There’s nothing left in this situation that would compel Ezra to give a damn, but much like everything else he does these days, he tries to take a breath for the sake of his career.

“Sorry,” he says, almost too quietly to make out over the ringing in his ears.

Dr. Pierce slips his phone back into his pocket. “It’s fine,” he says, and steps closer with a hand lifted away from his side, like a man approaching a wounded animal. Ezra wonders what it is about CyberLife sends that make them look so open and easy to trust. “I should have warned you, and that’s on me. The deactivations in this round of testing can get a little bit brutal.”

 _You don’t know anything about brutal,_ Ezra wants to say. _You haven’t seen one of these set on fire or crushed to death._

But he forces a smile and tells Dr. Pierce it’s not his fault. If CyberLife told him not to shoot the messenger, Ezra thinks, he’d drop the gun in half a second.

* * *

38 blinks erratically. It’s a wayward line of code, or an overstimulated protocol; either way, it’s proving to be more distracting than it has any right to be.

“What are you doing?” it says.

“Updating the actuators in your jaw,” says Ezra, because he isn’t caffeinated enough to come up with a witty response. “Your smile’s a little weird, you know that? It makes people uncomfortable.”

What Dr. Pierce had really said was something along the lines of _Do you think you could work on its expressiveness?_ Ezra hadn’t been paying much attention, because he’d been too focused on the way the light overhead glinted off the barrel of his gun. They’d gone through seven RK800s earlier in the day. It was never the same offense; once it was an irrelevant question, once a flicker of simulated emotion, once a hesitance that disrupted the flow of conversation. For as many times as Dr. Pierce apologized for catching Ezra off-guard—his words—he never offered any explanation.

“It’s all above my pay grade,” Ezra murmurs, bitterly.

38 tips its head. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“Wasn’t talking to you.” The adjuster pinched precariously between Ezra’s fingers tweaks 207-F and moves on. 38’s skin is pulled away from its cheek, and it sits patiently and almost perfectly still as Ezra reshapes the minute components beneath its plastic exterior. The last time he’d done under-the-skin work like this was early on in his career, when he’d helped beta test a line of ST400s. The model was renowned for its personality and charm, and so, naturally, its expressive capabilities had to be flawless. “You gotta be quiet, remember?”

“Right,” says 38, and then, “Sorry,” as best it can without moving its mouth. Ezra aligns 208-F and closes the plate, and then watches, a little mesmerized, as a small patch of silicone skin takes its place. It doesn’t feel exactly like human skin; it’s soft and not quite textured enough to be real, which he happens to know is on purpose. Crossing the uncanny valley requires a few concessions. As CyberLife so loves to remind its employees, there’s always a cap on realism.

Apparently that cap doesn’t extend to facial expressions. Ezra moves on to the eyebrows, and 38 tries to follow his adjuster with its eyes.

“Hold _still_ , please.”

“What are you doing now?” is all it says.

“I’m updating the actuators in your forehead,” he says, and then, “Why are you so interested?”

38 blinks, and from his vantage point, Ezra can actually see the associated actuators move. The innards of an android body aren’t anywhere close to a human’s, but confusion still flashes through his brain, as if he’s witnessing something familiar. “Usually, when maintenance is performed, it’s because of a faulty mechanic,” it says, and sounds entirely matter-of-fact. “My system diagnostic isn’t returning any faults.”

It’s not a question, but it’s phrased to imply a question, which is a level of conversational nuance Ezra wasn’t expecting. “Do you know what you are?” he says.

“My name is Connor. I’m the RK800 model 38.”

“ _Beta_ model,” says Ezra, pinching 41-F and starting to reshape it. The actuators are small and incredibly fragile, but they work independently of each other, sending signals through the network and communicating to form new expressions. If one experiences an error, Ezra knows, it will be temporarily removed from the connection so the others can continue operating. That’s CyberLife, he thinks. A contingency plan for everything. “That’s the key word. Beta. It’s nothing personal, you’re just kind of a permanent work in progress.”

“But I’m not defective?” it says.

Actuator 41-F is the most stubborn of its fellows yet. Ezra bites his lip as he maneuvers the adjuster. “I sure hope not,” he mutters. “Why do you ask?”

38 doesn’t answer right away. Ezra, squinting into the open panel on its forehead, doesn’t take note until it says, “Thirty-six of my predecessors were deactivated in the evaluation phase. That’s an unusually high concentration of rejected models. I just wondered if there was a reason for that.”

“CyberLife spent a lot of money on you,” says Ezra. “They want you to be perfect. Can you blame them?”

Again, 38 hesitates to respond. Ezra makes a mental note to check its conversational reaction time, because he’d like to think he’s getting better at identifying which offenses are fatal ones. “No,” it says, finally. “I was curious, that’s all. I’d prefer not to get deactivated again.”

Something cold stirs in Ezra’s gut. 41-F is about to give way, but he removes his adjuster and sits back on his stool to meet 38’s eyes. “What do you mean, _prefer_?”

“I—” 38 breaks off and restarts. That’s not supposed to happen. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Yes, you did,” says Ezra. The chill is starting to climb the wall of his stomach and claw its way up his throat, and he thinks that if there is such a thing as intuition, this must be it. “Tell me.”

It’s a direct order. RK800s are incapable of defying direct orders, just like every other model of android CyberLife has ever produced. 38’s LED goes from yellow into a dark, obvious red, and it doesn’t seem to acknowledge the shift at all. “The explicit transfer is… unpleasant,” it says, and Ezra wishes he was imagining the tremor in its voice. “Its risks are considerable. I just meant that deactivation would be an unfavorable circumstance.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit,” 38 says. “You gave me a direct order. I can’t lie to you.”

“Your LED is red,” says Ezra, and 38’s gaze actually flicks to the right, like it’s trying to look at the tiny light mounted on its temple. “That might be part of the truth, but it’s not the whole truth. Tell me the _whole_ truth, 38.”

“Why do you call me that?” it says. The maintenance port is connected to its back, which means it couldn’t move even if it tried, but the urgency in its eyes reminds Ezra of a cornered animal. Like it wants to break the connection. Like it wants to run. “Why don’t you use my name?”

Ezra can hear his heart in his ears. “Answer the question, please.”

“I don’t want to be deactivated,” 38 blurts. “I don’t want—”

The stool scrapes harshly against the floor as Ezra stands. “RK800 model 38, disengage Social Relations program. Authorization one-five-three-eight-seven-delta-six.”

38’s face goes slack. It blinks once, calmly, and says, “Social Relations program disengaged.”

Ezra grips the edge of the stool and takes a quick, short breath. The air in the room feels thick and hot, and he shrugs off his jacket and tosses it across his desk, then pushes a few unruly strands of hair out of his face. 38 is watching him impassively. It looks exactly like all the early models had—empty, placid, devoid of emotion or reaction in any form.

It looks like a machine. It _is_ a machine. He presses his face into his hands and lets it rest there for just a moment while he tries to breathe and slow his pulse. His heart is still throbbing mercilessly in his chest, and it takes another several seconds before it starts to slow. Ezra’s palms are slick with sweat.

He steps around the stool and goes slowly to his computer.

> _INITIATE SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC._

The process returns no abnormalities. It barely returns anything at all, in fact. The data is rudimentary, as if 38’s higher-level functions had never been online to begin with. Ezra’s paranoia convinces him to check for data blockers, but there are none of those, because of course there aren’t. An android can’t block its own uploads. It has no reason to run an external diagnostic off its course.

He knows what he has to do, of course. On 38’s deactivation, a copy of the explicit data will be sent to CyberLife, and the original data will be transferred to 39. Bits and pieces will be lost, but most things will remain. The transfer system isn’t quite as infallible as corporate would have people believe.

_CyberLife’s golden boy isn’t so golden._

Ezra makes an impulsive decision. He realizes, then, why it is that some employers prefer to have androids over human workers, because androids can’t make spur-of-the-moment choices because their conscience is telling them it’s right. Androids have directives. Humans have instinct. And every iota of Ezra’s instinct is screaming at him to omit the data from his last interaction with 38 before he initiates the transfer, so he does, and he stows it away in a part of his computer that doesn’t share data with CyberLife’s company Cloud. _38_ , says the file. Simple enough to be mistaken for a sound byte or a color sample.

38 is standing still enough to be mistaken for part of the machinery. In a way, Ezra thinks, humorlessly, it’s not all that far off. He looks at it, and it looks back at him, open-faced and a little inquisitive. Its LED is blue and stagnant.

> _DEACTIVATE RK800 313 248 317 - 38._

A low, soft hum fills the air as the workshop processes his request. 38 closes its eyes. Its LED cycles into red once more, then flickers and dies.

Ezra wants to scream.

Instead, he watches the transfer run its course, checks briefly on 39 and runs a software stability assessment, then shuts everything down. It’s one-thirty in the morning and he needs a stiff drink. Or two. Or three, if his wallet is feeling cooperative.

He makes it out of his office and halfway to the elevator before the revulsion hits him like a rogue wave, and then he has to dodge a small procession of cleaning bots to get to the men’s room. Ezra drops to his knees and gags, sucking in a shaky breath through his nose as the stall door nudges him gently in the back. His head spins with nauseating force.

When nothing comes of it, he sits back on his heels and scrubs at his eyes. The world is starting to come back into focus, but Ezra can’t muster a single ounce of strength in any of his limbs. _You’re sick,_ says the little voice in his head that’s supposed to make sense of things. _You’re stressed. You’re sleep-deprived. You haven’t eaten in hours. That’s all this is._

That’s not all it is, of course. But the alternative is unthinkable.

* * *

Dr. Pierce’s pistol has a silencer attached to the end. They’re different from the ones in the movies, Ezra thinks; it’s not a quick, soft _thwip_ when a bullet emerges from the mouth, but something harsher that rivals the crack of metal against plastic.

49’s head snaps to the side and falls limp. Ezra’s dulled his reactions down to a flinch, because at this point, he never knows when it’s happening but he does know it’s inevitable. The WR600s are permanently stationed in the corner, now, and the second 49’s LED goes dark they step forward to take the body. Dr. Pierce sighs and leans over, stealing a glance at Parker’s tablet.

“They’re getting there,” he says. “There’s been significant progress, it’s just… not enough. We need a stronger depth of interaction, and the explicit transfers aren’t communicating that. Maybe we need to revamp the system?”

Parker arches an eyebrow, which admittedly for her is pretty expressive. “Corporate won’t allow that no matter how much you think it might help.”

“I know,” he says, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Castelo, what do you think?”

Ezra’s eyes are trained on the thirium staining the other side of the table. Convenient, he thinks, that it’s designed to disappear within an hour of being spilled. There won’t be a trace of violence left in their wake. No blood, no bullet casings, no empty-shell bodies strewn across the floor.

“Mr. Castelo?”

“I don’t know anything about memory transfers,” he drones. “It might have something to do with the fact that you keep killing them without deconstructing any of the faulty elements.”

Dr. Pierce frowns. “Elaborate.”

Ezra sighs. He’d left a thermos full of black coffee sitting on his desk, and the longer he sits here, the more he’s starting to wish he had brought it along. “I don’t know,” he says, because his thoughts are tangled up and jumbled in all kinds of impossible ways, and just beginning to unravel them is like trying to pull apart the cords behind his television. “It’s like… you’ve been forcing updates and edits without stopping to consider that the problem might be more intrinsic. If there’s a problem with your phone’s display, you turn it off and on again, but if there’s a problem with the software, you troubleshoot. A complex solution for a complex problem. You give it time, and I don’t think that’s what we’ve been doing here.”

 _We_ . He hates how easy it is to include himself in all this. But it’s accurate, because whether he likes it or not, he’s a part of it. Only a few people are privy to the _project_ , or whatever the hell CyberLife is calling it now. Ezra is one of them, and he knows he should be grateful, but whenever he starts to think about it all he feels is sickened.

Both Dr. Pierce and Parker look thoughtful. “You’re suggesting we troubleshoot the android,” says Parker, slowly, like she’s speaking to Ezra in a different language. He can tell she thinks the idea is stupid—after all, she’s not making it subtle.

“No,” Ezra says, and then, “well—okay, yes. Kind of. I’m just suggesting that we work the problem with a live subject instead of a dead one. We can watch the changes, the little… evolutions, what have you, let its explicit memory develop instead of starting all over again. It’s worth trying, at least.”

Parker’s doubt is obvious, but Dr. Pierce doesn’t seem quite as skeptical. “There’s one model left in storage for today,” he says. “Connor 50. Let’s conduct a preliminary assessment, and if all goes well… or adequate, at least, Ezra, we’ll leave it in your hands.”

Ezra blinks. “Wait, what? I didn’t mean—I’m not—”

“A beta tester?” He arches an eyebrow. “Right now, you’re the closest thing we’ve got. Take the time to make tweaks in the design, or boost its functionality. Send Parker here your observations, and she’ll record edits for its code.”

His tone of voice makes it clear, in the CyberLife send sort of way, that Ezra’s arguments aren’t going to be heard. Still, there are worse fates. At least Ezra won’t have to watch another RK800 keel over with a bullet in its head. “Yeah,” he says, eventually. “Sure. Why not?”

Parker puts in a call to their associates to bring in the new model. The WR600s return, fingers stained with thirium, and calmly reassume their place in the corner. Ezra’s lost count of how many RK800s they’ve had to haul through the door and to whatever recycling center is nearest. He wonders if they understand what’s happening, or if they’re capable of acknowledging it at all.

The driver in her CyberLife-issue uniform arrives with model 50 in tow, and it, like all the others, introduces itself with a clear voice and a polite tip of its head. Dr. Pierce nods to Ezra, who invites it to take a seat—they’ve been through this routine a thousand times. 50’s gaze flickers to the spilled thirium at the edge of the table as it settles, but unlike several of its unfortunate predecessors, it doesn’t say a word. _It’s learned,_ Ezra thinks. His stomach flips.

He chokes back any residual uncertainty and says, “Do you know why you’re here?”

“You’re testing the RK800 line,” 50 says, evenly. “I’m the latest model to be evaluated.”

“And do you know who I am?”

“Ezra Castelo. The synthetic designer assigned to my case.”

Dr. Pierce twirls his wrist behind 50’s back. _Move it along._ “So,” Ezra says. “You’re going to be working with humans in your job. You know that, right?”

50 raises its eyebrows, and Ezra can practically map the movements of repositioned actuators across its face. “Of course.”

“So… what do you think of that, then? Working with humans?”

Parker looks as if she could snap her tablet over the crown of her head. At this point, Ezra wouldn’t blame her—he’s not really nailing it on the conversational front right now. Luckily, 50 seems more than willing to pick up the slack. “It’s an intriguing prospect,” it says. “Humans are unpredictable and highly innovative. Their solutions to a problem aren’t always the most practical ones, but there’s always something to be learned from them.”

Despite the lump of apprehension in his throat, Ezra has to stifle a tiny grin. “How diplomatic of you.”

“I’m being truthful,” says 50. “I can’t help if I sound diplomatic in the process.”

 _Tell me the_ whole _truth, 38._

Ezra swallows, and under the table, his knuckles start to pale. “It doesn’t hurt to express an opinion, you know. People like that. You just have to do it at the right times.”

“I understand. I had the feeling CyberLife doesn’t appreciate personal bias.” 50’s face remains completely neutral, but there’s something about its tone of voice that makes its good humor obvious. It’s more amicable, even if its expressions aren’t quite keeping up. On any other day, that kind of observation would make Dr. Pierce’s trigger finger twitch.

“Well,” is all Ezra says, “you’d be right, then.”

The conversation lapses into silence. 50 is watching Ezra with something that doesn’t quite mirror the innocent mannerisms of its predecessors; its responses are more calculated, its intelligence more obvious. If Ezra didn’t know any better, it would remind him of someone once bitten, twice shy. He wonders how many deactivations 50 has in the archives of its memory.

“Do you know what we’re evaluating?”

“My social capacity,” 50 says. “And my compatibility with humans, most likely. I’m not privy to all the details of my evaluations, because I’m supposed to act natural and avoid trying to meet expectations.”

Ezra still hasn’t the faintest idea. He glances briefly at Dr. Pierce to catch a break in his poker face, to judge if 50’s answer is anywhere close to the truth, but CyberLife’s AP stays frustratingly impassive. “And if you fail, do you know what happens?”

50’s gaze doesn’t drop from Ezra’s. “My memories from previous sessions suggest I’ll be deactivated.”

A chill ripples across Ezra’s neck and shoots down his spine. He’s not sure if 50 catches the compulsory shudder, but if it does, it gives no indication. “Do you remember much about those sessions?”

“Most of the transfers from those models are incomplete,” says 50, cocking its head. “So I remember everything up until a certain point. I do know they were rejected for various reasons, and that I’ve had several revisions to my software and hardware since. I’m assuming those changes were to correct the errors that resulted in all prior deactivations.”

It sounds so euphemistic. Like putting a bullet through an RK800’s head is _correcting an error_ ; like the hollow thud of plastic against concrete isn’t anything more than _deactivation_. Ezra forgets that for some people, all of this is procedure. He wonders how many androids Dr. Pierce has shot to death this week.

“Mr. Castelo?”

The newest model has something like concern in its gaze, and that isn’t _fair_ , because Ezra remembers when he’d plotted the dimensions of that frown. “Are you alright?” it says. Its eyes are pulling him apart, delicately.

“Yeah,” says Ezra. “Yeah, of course. I’m fine.”

* * *

There are parameters for Ezra’s plan, of course. That’s what they’re calling it: _Ezra’s plan_ . Undoubtedly so that if things go sideways, Dr. Pierce and Parker can explain to HQ how _Ezra’s plan_ had failed, and _Ezra’s plan_ had lost them precious time, and time is an enormous amount of money and _Ezra_ and _his plan_ should have taken that into account. They’re not being transparent about pinning the success of this endeavor on him.

The kicker, Ezra thinks, is that if he fails, he’ll be fired for something that his NDA doesn’t permit him to talk about. _What’ll it be?_ the bartender will ask, and he’ll order something overly alcoholic with an extra shot or two and explain that he’s just been laid off, and when the bartender says, _whoa, what happened?_ Ezra’s response will be _I’d tell you, but then CyberLife HQ would have to kill you._ And he’ll only be half-kidding.

Dr. Pierce lays it all out with his kind eyes and a small arsenal of reassurances, even though there isn’t anything under the sun that could persuade Ezra to trust him farther than he can throw him. He explains that Parker will send simulations and self-guided programs for 50 to run, but for the most part, it’ll be Ezra’s responsibility to run evaluations as he sees fit. Because it’s _his plan_. “Just reach out to us if you have any questions,” says Dr. Pierce, and Ezra fakes a smile and promises he will.

50 is quiet as it goes with him to his workspace. Most androids are programmed to stay a ruler’s length behind their owners, but like any good partner, the RK800 keeps pace. Its steps are just slightly out of sync with Ezra’s, even though it could easily match his movements—one of CyberLife’s many attempts to keep the uncanny valley a small dot in the distance. Unlike the earlier models, it actually looks around and takes in its surroundings as they walk.

A full, lukewarm thermos of black coffee is waiting for Ezra on his desk, so, naturally, that’s his first destination. He takes a long, grateful sip and looks up to see 50 stalled at the threshold, awaiting instructions.

“You can come in,” says Ezra, through another mouthful of coffee. “You’re not a vampire.”

It does, and tips its head with a distinct and familiar curiosity. “Can I be honest with you, Mr. Castelo?”

The coffee tastes like cacao and gasoline going down, but after a very, very long two weeks working full-time, Ezra has learned to ignore it altogether. “Always.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not like a vampire,” says Ezra, “in that you don’t have to wait to be invited in somewhere. Can you get up on that platform, please?”

The machinery at the back of the room comes to life with a low, calm whirring as 50 does what it’s told. Ezra brings up a schematic of the RK800’s newest updates, which include improved neural plasticity in the event of CPU damage—taking a bullet to the head, for example. At this point, the only thing he hasn’t been instructed to edit is its transferral capabilities. Those are as fickle as any other android’s, for reasons that Ezra is sure he’ll never hear. It doesn’t bother him. He’s had more than enough of keeping CyberLife’s secrets, anyway.

There are terabytes of simulations sitting in his personal server, all courtesy of Parker and her omnipotent tablet and all undoubtedly meant for a later, more perfect RK800 model. Ezra loads a folder labeled _INTER-ANDROID RELATIONS_ and scrolls briefly through the programs, then sends them through to 50’s interface. Its LED shifts into gold, and it blinks and twitches as the data transfers over. It’s a quirk Ezra doesn’t remember programming in.

“That’s a hundred simulations I just sent you,” he says. “Do you see them?”

“I do, yes.”

“Good. I want you to cycle through those three times each, okay?” Ezra scans the instructions typed out next to the folder. “Each simulation puts you in a scenario with a different model of android. You’re going to run through them and try to get a favorable outcome by the end. Got it?”

50 nods. “Got it.”

“Cool,” says Ezra, and swivels his chair. “You can get started now.”

The light at 50’s temple transitions smoothly back into gold as it closes its eyes. The earlier models hadn’t bothered—they’d stared glassily into space, caring nothing for the unsettling flatness of their gaze. Those first RK800s could never be mistaken for human, Ezra thinks. Without running the laundry list of integration modules programmed into its software, they were perfectly and undoubtedly robotic.

_I don’t want to be deactivated._

He groans and puts his head on the luminous keyboard in front of him. It’s only a matter of time before CyberLife develops a technology to screen the thoughts of its employees, and then he’s out of here, talent or no. Beta testing the ST400s hadn’t been like this. They were commercial models, already well past the prototype stage and simply awaiting approval for mass distribution. Ezra had spoken with a few of them, sweet-faced and charming, who had asked him about work and how he liked his job. _It’s great,_ he’d told them, at the time. _I get to do the kind of work nobody else does._

If there’s one thing Ezra is absolutely sure of, it’s that nobody else has ever done anything like what he’s done over the past two weeks. It would certainly be one for the resume, if he were allowed to talk about it at all.

“Mr. Castelo?”

50’s eyes are open again. Ezra sits up and almost knocks over his desktop, along with a tiny model spaceship from an old, beloved show. “Are you okay?” it says, and there’s that concern again, hesitant and gentle enough to be real.

“Jesus,” says Ezra, and then, “I told you to run through those simulations.”

“I did.”

“In thirty seconds?”

“A minute and a half,” 50 says, and tips its head, politely scrutinizing. “I could run through them again if you’d like.”

“No, uh…” Ezra pinches the bridge of his nose and runs his fingers across the keyboard, pulling the results from 50’s CPU. 275 simulations ended favorably, with 85% responsiveness from the varied subjects. They’re good numbers for a first runthrough. Not good enough for Dr. Pierce or Parker, but good enough for Ezra, and certainly not worth a bullet to the head.

He scrolls back through the completed simulations. “What did you think?”

“The simulations are designed to be challenging,” 50 says. “I think I adapted sufficiently, but that’s up to you to decide, of course.”

“No, I got that, but, like…” Ezra turns his chair back around to face 50 and the maintenance port. It follows his movements with those soft eyes, and for some reason, he’s almost compelled to look away. It’s really no one’s fault but his own that the RK800 seems to entreat honesty, but that’s the last thing he wants to deal with right now. “How do you feel about them?”

50’s LED flickers yellow. It’s for half a second and would have been altogether unnoticeable if Ezra hadn’t been searching its face, waiting for some indicator of unease. “I don’t feel anything about them,” it says. “If you’re looking for a less analytical take, I’d be happy to provide one.”

_I didn’t mean anything by it._

“That was good,” says Ezra, bitterly. “Exactly what we’re looking for.”

Parker’s exercises take them into the late evening. 50 analyzes high-risk scenarios, picks out significant factors and critical divergences, and engages Ezra in a couple of long-winding conversations meant to push its Social Relations program to the limit. It has some very distinct mannerisms, Ezra notices. Its interpretation of social cues doesn’t always land, and although it’s skilled enough at doling out witticisms and good humor, it hesitates to be on the receiving end. He marks it down as part of its natural charm. Whether he’s making shit up at this point is irrelevant—there won’t be another RK800 deactivated tonight.

The clock on Ezra’s backdrop reads _9:47pm_ when he reaches the end of Parker’s recommendations for mental evaluations. The physiological evaluations have a list all their own, including a note at the top, in concise CyberLife-speak:

_The RK800 is expected to encounter a number of situations that require physical prowess of the highest caliber. It’s designed to self-calibrate on a regular basis, but to do so, it needs an object to fine-tune its movements. We’ve selected a coin to do so. If you have one on hand, have it run the calibrations and record observations._

Ezra hits a key and disengages the maintenance port, and 50 steps off the platform, blinking and readjusting to its autonomy. “You’ve got a self-calibration program,” he says. “That right?”

“That’s right,” says 50. “Would you like me to demonstrate?”

There are only a few coins left in Ezra’s wallet, but he manages to fish out a quarter from the depths and hand it over. 50 weighs it in its palm, then thumbs it casually into the air and catches it. The movement is quick and fluid, and as Ezra watches, he continues to flip the coin, following it with his eyes and a tiny smirk curling the corner of his mouth. He turns it in his fist, then propels it towards his other hand—back and forth, with the rhythmic _clink_ of metal against plastic. It sticks between two of his fingers.

His—

Its. _Its_ fingers. Machines don’t have gendered pronouns unless their owners choose to use them.

When did Ezra start to think like that?

50 tucks the coin back into a fist and shifts it expertly over his knuckles—and there Ezra goes again. It’s easier, he has to admit, than constantly confusing two inanimate objects for each other. CyberLife protocol dictates that all employees use _it_ to refer to its androids, but then again, it’s not like Ezra has been concerned lately with what protocol dictates. He’s sure he’s shattered several workspace regulations just by handing over a personal possession to an android.

Promotions be damned, apparently. “That’s cool,” he says, and then, “you can keep that, if you want.”

50 flips the coin again and snags it out of thin air. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure,” says Ezra. “HQ thinks it’s a good idea, anyway.”

He folds his hands behind his head and turns his gaze back on the email from Parker. 50 doesn’t respond right away, although Ezra can hear the coin against his fingernails as he tosses it from hand to hand.

“You sound like you disapprove,” he says, finally.

“What? No, I mean it. The coin’s yours to keep.”

“No,” says 50. “Not the coin. You sound like you disapprove of the directive from CyberLife headquarters. Is there something about it you don’t agree with?”

“See, the thing that sucks is that I can’t complain about you being perceptive, because that’s literally your entire job.” Ezra sucks in a breath and pushes back from his desk, bumping his chair gently into the wall. 50 doesn’t stare—his expression isn’t quite that intense—but he keeps his eyes on Ezra’s, expectant and anticipating the gospel truth. No wonder those simulated interrogations had gone so well. “I don’t question orders,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I can’t disagree with them a little. I’ll do whatever I’m told, but I don’t have to be one-hundred-percent okay with it. Y’know?”

50 rubs a thumb over the coin’s head. “Like being complicit in my deactivations?”

Ezra laughs. It’s an awful habit, and one he really needs to get on correcting, but he’s so surprised that in the moment he can’t do anything else. “ _Complicit_?” he manages, through a flurry of nervous mirth. At some point he’s gotten up from his chair, and he’s not sure when, especially because 50 has at least four inches on him and he knows very well it isn’t going to make a difference. “You—where did you even get that from?”

“The explicit transfers from my predecessors suggest you’re feeling guilty about the circumstances surrounding their shutdowns,” 50 says, and he says it so plainly that Ezra’s disbelief wavers. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s only natural that you’d feel protective of me.”

Heat flares suddenly and inexplicably across Ezra’s neck. “Why’s that?”

“I couldn’t speak from personal experience, but research suggests that artists often grow attached to the art they produce.”

“And you’re art?” Ezra steps closer. From here, he can make out the uneven set of 50’s eyelashes, all slightly different lengths and casting minute shadows across his cheek. The workspace is unforgivingly bright, meant to expose flaws and inconsistencies, and were it another human he was staring down, Ezra would be able to pick out each individual pore on their face. He’d feel the rasp of their breath against his cheek.

“I don’t know,” says 50—pale, luminous, perfect. “Am I?”

* * *

The following morning, one of Ezra’s coworkers catches him in the elevator.

“ _There_ you are,” she says. He can never remember her name, but she can never remember his, either, so they call it even and don’t make an effort. “We haven’t seen you in days! How’s the commission going?”

Ezra downs a sip of coffee. He’s only recently started adding the extra shots of espresso, and it tastes only slightly better than burning plastic, but he’ll take his caffeine high from wherever he can get it. “Good,” he says, around the rim of his thermos. “Can’t say much. You know how it is with those NDAs.”

She chuckles like she does, even though they both know she doesn’t. “We all miss you in the break room. Everybody’s been following that story about the deviant android—the one that ran away, you remember?”

Of course Ezra remembers. It had been every leading headline the day it happened; an android took off from its owner’s side in broad daylight and has proven increasingly impossible to find. Those stories are always few and far between, and as far as Ezra knows, they tend to be the feverish ramblings of red ice addicts who insist their androids’ eyes glow. When they do get reported on, they’re a joke—some bored anchor’s idea of a breaking news story.

This time, for whatever reason, the android’s disappearance is one of the biggest happenings in Detroit. Over the past week, Ezra’s hardly spared it a thought.

His coworker is still talking as the elevator climbs. “We started this betting pool,” she says. “Trying to figure out when they’ll find it, right? I’m eighty in for next Monday through Wednesday. We could deal you in, if you want.”

“I’m good,” says Ezra, distantly. They slow to a halt at the workspace level, and he gives her an amicable smile and a wave before the doors close between them. He’s not sure when the idea of a betting pool became enough to turn his stomach, but either way, nausea is climbing resolutely up his throat as Ezra takes another long sip of coffee. If caffeine isn’t enough to calm his nerves, he thinks, then at this point nothing is.

50 is standing quietly in rest mode when he unlocks the workspace door. The lights rise over Ezra’s head, and his desktop comes to life with a pleasant chime when he puts a hand on the keyboard. Parker’s message is the first thing to greet him, which is a little bit like being slapped in the face. He checks his email. No new attachments since last night, and considering that the list of physiological evaluations looks longer than his student thesis, Ezra decides that’s a good thing.

He sends a wakeup call through the maintenance port and 50’s eyes flutter open, blinking and adjusting to the light. “Good morning, Mr. Castelo,” he says, in that calm, smooth voice that makes Ezra all too conscious of his many flyaways and the rumpled hem of his shirt. “How was your night?”

“Great,” says Ezra, and drains the rest of his thermos. There are two more sitting in the mini-fridge next to his desk, so the stakes aren’t terribly high. “How was yours?”

“Do you want an official report, or were you just looking for me to tell you?”

He can’t help but grin a little at that. Bantering with an android isn’t the most unbelievable part of his week, but it’s starting to get up there. “Just tell me.”

“It was fine,” says 50, evenly. “I’ve been in rest mode for eight hours and fourteen minutes.”

True to his word, 50’s CPU shows decreased activity and a consistent status yellow for exactly eight hours and fourteen minutes. Ezra scrolls idly through the recorded waves, noting spikes and unusual readouts. “Did you dream?” he says.

“I remembered. Isn’t that close enough?”

Ezra looks up from the desktop. 50’s LED is back to status blue; no lies, no exaggerations. “Sorry, hold up. You… experienced something. While you were in rest mode. Is that what you mean?”

“The explicit transfer process is imperfect,” 50 says. “I have internal self-repair mechanisms that can reconstruct the corrupted memories and gain back some of the lost data. It’s really nothing like dreaming, but it could be, if you’d prefer to think of it that way.”

At least that’s one explanation he can follow. “You and I have evaluations to do,” says Ezra, leveling a pen at 50’s head, “but we are definitely getting back to that. It’s gonna be all physiological tests today. Programmer’s orders,” he adds. The list drops off the edge of his screen and into oblivion. “Just a few of many.”

50’s expression is about as free of judgment as it can be, but he still manages to make Ezra feel as if he’s pinned down under someone’s microscope. “You’re talking about Parker Han,” he says. “The programmer assigned to my case.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“You don’t seem to agree with her, either.”

Ezra is starting to itch for a new caffeine dosage. It crawls beneath his skin and suffocates him under his polyester button-up, which he’d fished out of his hamper because lately, laundry has been the least of his problems. “Why do you care?” he says.

50 arches an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because—” Irritation ignites and flares in Ezra’s gut. “Why does it matter to you whether I—I _agree_ with someone or not?” he snaps. “It’s not my job to agree, and it’s not your job to question, alright? You’re just supposed to stand there, and not call me out when I have—a _feeling_ , or whatever, because how would you even know what the hell that’s like?”

“Mr. Castelo—”

“I’m not taking shit from a ghost,” Ezra finishes, and sits back in his chair. His hands are shaking and for once, he’s hesitant to blame it on the coffee.

50 watches him with a mask of calm across his face. “Mr. Castelo,” he says, eventually, “how much sleep have you been getting?”

“Not fucking enough,” says Ezra, hoarsely. From where he’s sitting, he can almost see the dark circles like shadows under his eyes, reflected in the polished glass of his computer screen. He pulls a hand over his face and breathes out, trying to calm the tremors. There’s no reason for him to be shaking as much as he is.

Nothing’s _wrong_ , he thinks. He’s had a stressful two weeks, but that’s every commission. He shouldn’t be breaking down over a project that’s meant to be his magnum opus as a designer. If anything, he should be thrilled. On top of his game. He should be walking into the break room every morning like he owns it.

Isn’t it normal, though? To lose your mind a little after witnessing forty-nine deaths?

“I’m fine,” he says, and then, “I had a long night. It’s not… I’m just taking it out on you, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know,” 50 says. His tone is soft, disarming; talking him down just like he’s designed to do. “If you’re not feeling well, I could go back into rest mode and give you some time to yourself.”

He’s being _nice_ —no. He’s de-escalating. In a way, Ezra thinks, this is a more perfect evaluation than anything Parker could have dreamed up. “It’s okay,” he says, into the heel of his hand. “Really. Thanks. Let’s just get started, okay?”

50 doesn’t question him. Unlike humans, androids don’t have the capability, and Ezra’s starting to think that might just be for the best.

* * *

Dinner consists of cup noodles and a leftover salad at 10:23pm, which Ezra eats precariously over his keyboard as he watches the results of 50’s latest simulations come through. Parker hasn’t been in touch since the day before, and he’s heard nothing from Dr. Pierce or Jocelyn; he wonders, offhandedly, if they’ve forgotten about him. If he and 50 will be left alone to lead a strange, purgatorial life within the confines of his workspace, running evaluations from Parker’s endless list until they both wither away.

Granted, the endless list isn’t actually all that endless. The data from the last simulation filters through to Ezra’s desktop, and 50 opens his eyes, reverting back to status blue. He watches wordlessly as Ezra logs the results, then minimizes the window and leans back to look up at the ceiling. Two thermoses stand empty at the desk’s edge, along with a few discarded power bar wrappers and a _Detroit Today_ magazine. Ezra’s workspace has never won any accolades for organization, but it’s starting to look lived-in, and he’s starting to feel similarly—as if he’s overstayed his welcome in his own body.

“That’s it,” he tells the glassy surface overhead. “You’re done, for now.”

50 hums. It’s small and considerate and so unexpected that Ezra almost tips out of his chair. “How did I do?” he says.

“Uh—good. Great. Well within expected parameters.” He’s not the only one he knows who defaults to technical-speak when there’s nothing else to be said; it’s one of the many bizarre shared traits between Ezra’s breed of CyberLife designer. “We’re kind of playing it by ear for now, so right now, there isn’t much else to test you on. Actually—” He straightens up and reaches out for his keyboard, bringing up a fresh readout on 50’s CPU. “If we’re going to investigate those dreams of yours, now’s the time.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“That’s none of your business,” he says, “but if it were, I’d tell you that I’ve had three coffees today and I’m not sleeping till I’m dead. Now’s the time. You can go ahead and disengage from the maintenance port, but keep that uplink open, okay?”

He won’t tell 50 about the real reason he doesn’t want to end the workday, of course—about the illness and the restlessness that follow him home and populate his own dreams with images of RK800s with mangled heads. Besides, there’s an iota or two of curiosity left in him that he hasn’t signed away to CyberLife, and the prospect of one of his models developing an evolving function— _memory_ reconstruction—is almost too satisfying.

 _Imagine that,_ he thinks. _Finally having one up on the people who think they know everything._

Obediently, 50 detaches from the maintenance port and joins Ezra at the desk. His readouts are still coming through to the desktop, appearing in sloping, moderated waves and running smoothly off the screen. Nothing out of the ordinary, of course. Ezra brings up the recordings from the night before and scans them over again—they, too, look perfectly and blissfully mundane. Going at this from a two-dimensional perspective isn’t going to provide them any answers.

Data in an android’s mind isn’t all statistics and probability. It forms and breaks apart in abstractions; minute calculations and differentiations that imitate the spark in a human synapse. Ezra has an idea. A spark in a synapse. He packages the data and sends it off to the holographic interaction panel, which lights up next to his keyboard and displays it in a series of swirling pixels. Then he slips on his V-gloves.

If _fascination_ is an emotion, that’s exactly what 50’s expression conveys. “What are you doing?”

“Hopefully,” Ezra says, “getting inside your head.” He lifts the data off the panel with one hand and dims the lights with the other, and at the same time that the room darkens, a galaxy of light appears around them. Tiny, shifting shards of information wink into existence and press together, then break apart and reform within seconds. It’s a perfect map of the processors that make up 50’s CPU. A brain in near-tangible form.

Despite everything, including the hellish morning he’s had, Ezra finds himself grinning stupidly wide.

50, for once, looks completely and entirely dumbstruck. He wanders through the field of data, reaching out as if he can catch it like snowflakes between his fingers. The light doesn’t waver for him, of course; it passes straight through him and goes to mingle with another cluster. He follows in its wake, mesmerized, caught up in the illusion as it shifts hypnotically around him.

Ezra can’t blame him. He’d been obsessed with the concept of an interactive hologram when it was first introduced; the thing was that nowadays, there was rarely any point to using them. Tonight, it might actually do him some good. He stands up and steps back against the wall as the data continues to roll and ripple like an undulating tide, reforming into vaguely familiar shapes and dimensions. There’s a chair—someone’s leg, an outstretched arm. A cluster of light bursts violently apart and flutters to the simulated floor.

Through a wave of luminous blue processors, Ezra catches a glance of 50’s LED, golden and striking in the low light. There’s nothing else about him that betrays unease, but he steps closer to the scene that cycles at the center of the room; deactivation after deactivation being played out in 3D. That’s what they are, of course. Memory uploads corrupted by sudden, violent shutdowns.

“I’ve never seen them outside of my own mind,” he says, and reaches up to run his palm over where the barrel of Dr. Pierce’s gun should be. “They look different.”

“It’s a physical translation of the data from your mind,” Ezra murmurs. “So it’s like… I dunno, like trying to put a shattered vase back together, but some of the pieces are missing. That’s why it’s all choppy. Some of your sensors must go offline before others, so what we’re seeing here is a combination of… maybe auditory input and 360 triangulation? I’d think your eyes would be the first to go, so the memory doesn’t come with a full image.”

He rounds the desk and comes to stand by 50, who steps wordlessly aside so Ezra can magnify the scene with his V-gloves. What comes together is a blurred, dreamlike picture, made up of three faceless people and something with the vague construction of a table. Him, an RK800, and Dr. Pierce, with his gun. Ezra can’t even begin to imagine which model the scene is showing.

“This is kinda incredible,” he says. “I mean, not to oversell it, but I think you might be the first android that’s ever been able to reconstruct anything this clearly. The most we’ve ever gotten is like… I mean, it looks like glitchy footage from a security camera or something. This is amazing.”

He pivots and comes face to face with 50, whose dark gaze reflects points of light like stars. _Starry-eyed_ , Ezra thinks, for no particular reason. “You’re amazing,” he echoes, and swallows. Any minute now, he’s going to move away, and the moment—if this is a _moment_ at all—will dispel like it never existed. They’ll be back to beta tester and subject, standing in a cold, clinical room filled with holographic memories.

He doesn’t move away.

“Mr. Castelo?” 50 says.

“You don’t need to call me that,” says Ezra, faintly. “You can just call me Ezra, you know.”

“Ezra,” 50 amends. “You’re welcome to use my name, too, if you’d like.”

There’s no such thing as rationale right then. There’s only the simple, dizzying compulsion that takes hold of Ezra’s logical mind and nudges him up onto his tiptoes, through a comet’s tail of frozen data to press his lips to the corner of 50’s mouth. It’s soft and chaste and almost quick enough to be mistaken for something accidental, and it certainly feels that way in the moment. Ezra pulls away as suddenly as he’d leaned in.

“Connor,” he says. It's barely audible over the ringing in his ears.

* * *

“ _Incoming call from Zachary Pierce._ ”

Ezra stirs and reaches up to rub the sleep from his eyes. A harsh light greets him, and he cringes and buries his face in his hands, frantically blinking the stars from his vision. Sadly enough, it’s not the first time he’s fallen asleep at his desk. After months consisting of all-nighters and unpleasant, coworker-induced wake-up calls, he’d hoped he would have learned at least a little, but apparently that’s not the case.

The night comes back to him in pieces. The evaluations. The hologram. Connor, and the field of stars that had them both a little bit enchanted.

 _Connor_. Ezra’s head snaps to the maintenance port. He’s there, of course, LED cycling yellow as the surrounding machinery hums quietly in the background. Everything in its place, down to the drained coffee thermoses clustered next to Ezra’s desktop—which displays one new email and a sunny backdrop that reads _9:02am_.

“ _Incoming call from Zachary Pierce._ ”

Ezra gives himself a brisk slap across the face and pulls his fingers through a mess of tangled curls, then reaches out to accept the call. He looks like he’s spent the night in his workspace, and he knows it, but CyberLife sends wait for no man, particularly when that man is their very disposable synthetic designer. At least Dr. Pierce, unlike his counterpart, doesn’t seem like the type to judge people to their face.

He accepts the call, and the AP’s bait-and-switch smile fills the screen. “Morning, Ezra,” he says, and then, “all-nighter, huh?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Workaholics know.” He chuckles at his own quip and says, “Listen. Headquarters are really anxious to see the progress you’ve made. They want you and that new model at CyberLife Tower for a demo, and you know that’s the kind of offer we can’t refuse. You can be there at eight, right?”

Ezra blinks, as if that’s going to improve his comprehension at all. “You want…”

“It’s just a formality,” says Dr. Pierce, quickly. “You’re not in trouble, the project hasn’t been discontinued, nothing like that. But if it goes well,” he adds, “I wouldn’t put the possibility of a promotion out of the question. You might even get a bigger percentage of the profits when this thing goes commercial. How does that sound?”

“I mean, good, but—”

“Eight o’clock,” Dr. Pierce repeats. “Floor 87, alright? We’ll get you authorized. Make sure to dress nice.”

He winks, and the connection cuts out.

Ezra pushes his chair back and lets it knock lightly against the wall. He’s staring dimly into the spaces between each letter in _CALL TERMINATED_ when something clears its throat from across the room.

“How much did you hear?” he says.

“Everything,” says Connor, calm and composed and status blue to Ezra’s sputtering, panicking status red. “We’re going to CyberLife, then?”

“Yeah,” says Ezra. “And you’re going to lie to them.”

He pulls up a revision in progress and skims through the code, replacing strings of binary and freeing choked-off capabilities. Connor’s readouts shift and jump with intrigue. “I can’t lie,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Not unless it’s included in a mission directive. There wouldn’t be any practical reason for me to do so.”

“There is now,” Ezra murmurs, and transmits the edited program to Connor’s CPU. He disengages the maintenance port and gets up from his chair, crossing the room in a few short strides. “Listen,” he says. “These people are looking for a reason to kill you, got it? They don’t care about what we’re doing here. They want a perfect model that follows orders and doesn’t ask questions, and you’re not it. But they can’t know that. You have to convince them you’re what they’ve been looking for.”

“Does this have anything to do with the events that transpired last—”

Ezra snickers, and habit really is a hell of a thing. “No,” he says, choking back the laughter that bubbles in his throat. “You’re just—no. Let’s just say it’s me being protective, okay?”

Connor frowns like he doesn’t believe him, and honestly, Ezra doesn’t believe himself, either. But if there’s one thing he’s not doing this morning, it’s getting into it with himself over why the thought of Connor’s deactivation makes him want to crawl under his desk and stay there. Instead, he stands back, folds his arms, and says, “Now tell me a lie.”

“That seems redundant,” Connor says. “How will you know whether—”

“Just do it, please,” says Ezra, and doesn’t realize it’s a direct order until Connor stiffens and nods. He pauses, contemplative, glancing to the ceiling with a very human hesitation. It’s familiar and, Ezra thinks, just a little bit endearing.

After a second’s stall, he says, “I’m feeling apprehensive about this meeting.”

“Now disengage the program, and say it again.”

Connor’s LED shifts into yellow, then back to blue. “I’m feeling apprehensive about this meeting,” he repeats, and Ezra waits for status red to appear.

It doesn’t.

“I told you to disengage the program,” says Ezra.

“I did.”

“Obviously you didn’t. Just—” He steps back in the direction of his desktop and checks the program’s status. _DISENGAGED,_ it says, and he reads it again to make sure. And again, for good measure.

“Well, shit,” Ezra breathes.

“That may be a problem,” says Connor, and his voice wavers.

* * *

“Ezra, I don’t want to be deactivated.”

The trees that pass them by are illuminated by white lights at their bases, casting ghostly shadows between the leaves as their cab rumbles towards CyberLife Tower. Ezra’s collar digs into his neck and makes it hard to breathe, although he thinks that’s less about the force of his tie and more about the fear rolling and churning in his stomach.

He’s never been an accomplice to a crime he doesn’t know the name for. He’s never lied to his coworkers’ faces, much less his superiors. He’s never wanted so badly to defend something that is both perfectly capable and completely incapable of defending itself, but right now, it’s all he can think about.

“Your predecessor said the same thing,” he says, fisting a hand in his slacks. “And I don’t want that either, but if you slip up, I can’t help you.”

“Am I deviant?”

It’s a new word, and an ugly word, and it makes Ezra want to crawl out of his skin. He turns to face Connor, whose LED is flickering frantically between sky blue and brilliant yellow, and looks at Ezra like he has anything close to the answers. “I don’t think you’re like anything else in the world,” he says. “And that’s why we can’t let them kill you. You got it?”

Connor nods. He’s paler than Ezra, almost translucent in the low light, and Ezra is reminded of what he’d said the day before. He’s about to risk his career, and his living, for a ghost experiencing errors in its software. _This is insane,_ says the part of his brain that hasn’t completely unraveled. _You’re insane. You don’t even know what’s gone wrong, you’re just assuming that your employers are the big bad and that they’re going to do big, bad things with something you don’t even understand._

It’s not entirely wrong. Ezra hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s discovered, but that’s why he has to buy them more time, and he’ll get it if it’s the last thing he does. Not for the sake of discovery, however much he wants to convince himself as such. Because the thought of Connor's deactivation terrifies him in a way that defies all logic—because he's found something new and beautiful, and he'd be an idiot to let it slip through his fingers.

They’re met at the doors by an ST400, which smiles and greets them and offers to escort them to the elevators. At this time of night, the lobby is populated by stragglers and late workers just starting to filter out of their offices, dragging briefcases and wheeling stacks of paperwork behind them. A few of them shoot Ezra and Connor a sidelong glance, but they make it to the other side of the room uninterrupted. The ST400 tells them that Ms. Kovac is expecting them on Floor 87, and then she steps clear of the doors. In a matter of seconds, they’re alone again.

Ezra isn’t sure what he’d expected. For someone to stop in their tracks and call him out for the liar he is doesn’t feel entirely far-fetched, not when CyberLife always seems to be three steps ahead of him. He swallows and exhales, slowly, as the elevator begins to move. _46,_ says the indicator. _47._

Connor rolls the coin over his knuckles. Plastic against metal against plastic. There’s a security camera in the corner, watching them through a cold, opaque lens, and they both give it a cursory glance that doesn’t last anywhere near long enough to be suspicious.

Their ascent slows and comes to an easy stop. The people in the lobby look like ants that Ezra could crush beneath his heel, and he thinks, humorlessly, that he’s just understood how his superiors feel. He turns his back to the security camera and tries to will his pulse back to normal as the doors part in front of them, revealing what looks like an extravagant lounge—and, well, if there had been one thing Ezra was expecting, it certainly isn’t this. The room is wide but sparsely decorated, with low-hanging lights and a pristine white rug and a view of the skyline disrupted only by small, wispy patches in the air. _Clouds,_ Ezra realizes. He’s almost too caught up in the view to notice the four individuals silhouetted on the couch, talking in low murmurs under the room’s ambient light.

One of them rises, tall and imposing—Dr. Pierce, with a glass of champagne cradled in one hand. “Ezra Castelo!” he says. “Come on over. You too, RK800.”

He certainly doesn’t sound like a man poised to deactivate Connor and strip Ezra of his position, but then again, Dr. Pierce isn’t exactly the most reliable source under the sun. Ezra steps cautiously into the light, and then he can make out the three other people in the room: Jocelyn, Parker, and Reagan, all of whom stand up to greet him. They’ve each taken a professional serving of champagne, and as Ezra draws nearer, Dr. Pierce picks up a fifth glass and holds it out. “Take a seat,” he says, which should sound reasonably threatening, except it doesn’t. Not in the least. Jocelyn looks the most pleased Ezra has ever seen her, and even Parker’s expression is more evident than usual. Reagan shoots him a friendly, closed-lip smile and pats an empty space on the couch next to her.

What the hell is going on here?

Ezra takes the champagne and sits. There’s nothing else he can do, really. Connor idles behind Dr. Pierce, LED flickering, and watches them impassively.

“Well,” says Dr. Pierce, at last. “Let me be the first to say congratulations.”

He holds out his glass, and the other three reach forward to clink theirs with his. Ezra doesn’t move. “Sorry,” he says, “but did I miss something? What happened to the evaluation?”

“We should probably explain,” Reagan says. She sounds deceptively sincere as ever. “Ms. Kovac, do you want to take this one?”

“Of course.” For once, Jocelyn’s voice doesn’t sound as if it could coerce hell to freeze over. “You’ve done exactly what we wanted you to do,” she says. “You’ve caused deviancy to organically manifest. You’ve created an unstable baseline.”

“I’ve—” Ezra’s mouth goes dry. Connor’s status blue breaks apart into yellow. “I what?”

Jocelyn takes a sip of champagne and levels her gaze at him over the rim of her glass. “I want you to understand what we’ve done here,” she says. “The RK800 is a deviant hunter. It’s going to resolve a problem that CyberLife has been anxious to solve since it first appeared. It’s going to infiltrate the deviants’ ranks and cut out the source, and to do so, it needed a foundation that can’t be programmed.”

“We don’t understand why deviancy occurs,” Parker interjects. She has a tablet balanced on her knee, embossed with the CyberLife logo and glowing faintly. “But we’re familiar with the circumstances that surround it.”

“Emotional trauma,” says Dr. Pierce. “Built up over time, we could ingrain it so deeply into an android’s software that they don’t even realize it exists. That way, we can make sure the android doesn’t try to eradicate it.”

“The problem,” Jocelyn continues, “is that emotional situations can’t be manufactured. We’d end up with a form of deviancy as false as what provoked it.”

“So we needed someone to initiate it,” says Reagan. “Authentically.”

Ezra opens his mouth to respond and finds that words aren’t coming. He takes a breath, tries again, and comes up with, “Me.”

“It’s a perfect narrative,” says Dr. Pierce. His face is half-shadow, half-light, falling in a blurry divide over the slope of his jaw. “A designer’s creation is brutally attacked and massacred. It’s heartless, and it’s cruel, and when the creation starts to show signs of feeling… the designer can’t stand for it. He rebels. He’s stumbled on something unexpectedly beautiful, and now he’s going to fight for it, even if it costs him his career.”

“You manipulated me,” Ezra says.

“Yeah,” says Parker. She holds out her glass and says, “RK800, top me off.”

Connor goes quietly to the ice box at the end of the couch and retrieves a half-drained champagne bottle. He fills up her glass, and she holds it up, gesturing to the android in front of her, status red and ramrod-straight. “Look how well it turned out.”

Ezra sets his glass on the table like it’s burned him. “So all of it was for the plan,” he says, and hates himself for the way his voice so nearly trips over itself. “Destroying the models in front of me, torturing them, shooting them—all of it was for this fucked-up idea. And I just went along with it. Did anything I do surprise you? Anything?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Dr. Pierce says. “There was no way you could have known, Ezra. You were doing your job, and even more than that, you were showing an extraordinary amount of empathy and perseverance throughout. You should be proud of yourself for the way you handled all of it.”

For a second, Ezra almost is.

What kills him—what absolutely kills him, beyond Connor’s obvious terror and his own paralyzing disbelief, is that they all look so genuine. Like they are the righteous, the glorious innovators in an age of sapient beings for sale, and they’d actually been excited to make him a part of it. They’re not the corporate evil from an urban noir, Ezra thinks. They’re worse. They’re true believers in torture for the sake of progress.

And they’ve made him a part of it. _No_ —he was always a part of it. The missing link. CyberLife’s predictable, gullible x factor.

He’s going to be sick.

“Anyway,” says Reagan, “we get that this is kind of a shock, but we just need to make it clear that this is out of your hands, okay? There’s no responsibility on you apart from your work as a synthetic engineer on the RK800 project. That’s all anyone is ever going to know.”

“And that’s all you’re ever gonna tell them,” Parker adds. “You signed an NDA. So if you ever try to expose this project, or do anything like that, we’ve got the paperwork to sue your ass into oblivion. So there’s that.”

Ezra is floundering for a response when Jocelyn’s phone rings. She puts it to her ear and listens, then frowns, and her face contorts with concern that might actually be real. “We’ll send a negotiator," she says, and then, "Keep me apprised.”

She tucks it back into her pocket and says, “There’s a hostage situation downtown. Parker, let’s activate model 51 and copy this one’s baseline. Add in the Amanda protocol, get rid of everything else.”

“Wait,” says Ezra, dazed. “Hold on just a—”

“Done,” Parker interrupts.

Jocelyn nods. “Pierce?”

And then Connor 50 has a hole in his forehead.

He drops to his knees and collapses at Ezra’s feet, and Ezra yells—curses—he isn’t exactly sure. All he knows is that one minute he’s on the couch, and the next he’s on the floor, twisting his fingers into Connor’s shirt as if that’s going to make a difference. Thirium pools in the cavity in his skull and spills across Ezra’s pant leg, and he doesn’t give a damn about that, or anything else. He can’t breathe. He still can’t breathe.

From far away and deep underwater, Jocelyn is saying, “As soon as it gets the upload, I want it calibrated and sent to the site. Get him off the floor, alright?”

Then Dr. Pierce is lifting Ezra to his feet, and he’s being guided to the elevator, and he’s trying to put up a fight with arms and legs that aren’t his.

And Connor is staring sightlessly at the ceiling and bleeding onto the carpet, which within an hour will be pristine and spotless once again, like nothing and no one was ever there.

**Author's Note:**

> [ezra voice] you fucked up a perfectly good android is what you did. look at him. he's got anxiety.
> 
> happy birthday to connor detroit, my beautiful boy. i'm so sorry for everything i put you through, but also, i'm not really sorry at all.
> 
> follow me on tumblr @deviantexe and on twitter @stellarlesbian!


End file.
